


Her Mama's Nose

by meetthethiefa



Category: The Book of Mormon - Ambiguous Fandom, The Book of Mormon - Parker/Stone/Lopez
Genre: Childhood, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Implied miscarriage, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 19:17:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14921312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meetthethiefa/pseuds/meetthethiefa
Summary: Nabulungi is eight when her baba tells her she has her mama’s nose, and she can’t stop smiling because of it. She goes cross-eyed in an attempt to look at it, but it’s difficult because, well, it’s in the middle of her face and she can only really see the nose tip. She tries really hard to see more, though.





	Her Mama's Nose

Nabulungi is eight when her baba tells her she has her mama’s nose, and she can’t stop smiling because of it. She goes cross-eyed in an attempt to look at it, but it’s difficult because, well, it’s in the middle of her face and she can only really see the nose tip. She tries really hard to see more, though.

Then she gets dizzy and she stops, eyelids fluttering in an attempt to make the white dots in front of her eyes go away. They do, eventually, but she barely notices because now baba is laughing, and it’s not one of those strained laughs she’s starting to get used to, but a real genuine laugh that just makes her smile turn even goofier than it was before.

Something in her chest aches; she’s missed that sound.

She makes grabby hands at him, a sudden want to be lifted seeping through her veins and baba, ever the enduring father, picks her up, a hand beneath each of her armpits, and spins her around him. She squeals and he laughs again, and Nabulungi is pretty sure that it’s the second most beautiful sound she’s ever heard; nothing will ever beat the soft humming she would elicit from mama’s lips whenever she’d curl up against her chest in the late hours of the day.

It’s been a long time since she’s been able to do that.

“Do you want to see it?” baba asks, poking her on the nose.

There’s a strange twinkle in his eyes that Nabulungi can’t quite place. She nods nonetheless, enthusiastically so, and he holds her against his chest so she’s sitting on his arm. She knows they’re going to Kimbay’s place because there are only a couple of mirrors in the village and the one at Kimbay’s is closest to them.

Nabulungi leans into him as he walks, pressing her ear against his warm chest and she can hear the beating of his heart. It doesn’t take long before her breath follows it’s rhythm. She closes her eyes and for just a moment her entire world is nothing more than that steady, beating, slightly broken heart that she loves more than anything and her goofy smile turns into something softer and delicately sentimental.

It’s a smile reserved for baba and no one else. She hopes he knows this.

Three soft knocks and a quiet whisper from baba make Nabulungi reluctantly open her eyes; they’ve reached their destination. Kimbay stands in the doorway, Kizito by her side, tired yet welcoming. She’s been crying, it’s palpable in her red-rimmed eyes.

For a long time, Kimbay had been getting bigger and bigger and Nabulungi had been worried that there was something wrong with her. One day, she asked her about it and it made Kimbay’s shoulders shake, head thrown back as her large stomach vibrated. She shook her head. “No Nabulungi, there is nothing wrong with me.”

Nabulungi looked at her with big eyes. “Then what is happening with your stomach?”

Kimbay smiled. “It is a bundle of love growing inside of me,” she said, holding a protective hand over it. “Do you understand?”

Nabulungi didn’t but nodded anyway.

“Can I touch it?” she asked.

“Of course.”

Then, one day, Kimbay’s stomach wasn’t big anymore, and Nabulungi asked her where her bundle of love was; if it used to be in her stomach, then where was it now? Kimbay cried then, wept actually, shoulders shaking as sobs were torn from her throat, and then Nabulungi cried with her because she understood that something soul-breaking had happened even though she didn’t know what.

It scared her, the weeping, because she recognized it for what it was; she recognized it from her baba; baba had wept like that many times before; for her mama.

Nabulungi doesn’t want to think about it, but the memory forces it’s way into her head; the wretched image of Kimbay’s tear-soaked cheeks and glassy eyes. It makes her try to physically shake it out of her mind, but it doesn’t work and only makes baba look at her questioningly.

Nabulungi, without a second thought, reaches out with her tiny hand and rests it on Kimaby’s cheek. “It is going to be okay,” she says, because she’s scared her heart will burst (not in the good way) if Kimbay doesn’t smile. Their hearts have been through enough already; her’s and Kimaby’s and kizito’s and baba’s, and she just wants to see Kimbay smile.

Kimbay does.

It’s small and it’s meek but it’s there and it’s the second most beautiful thing Nabulungi has ever seen; nothing will ever beat the look on her mama’s face when baba would sneak up behind her and press a kiss to her ear, arms wrapped around her waist.

Then they’re inside, Kimbay leading them to the round mirror hanging on one of the walls of her hut. Baba sets her down on the floor, and Nabulungi looks at her own reflection. Finally, she can see that she does, in fact, have her mama’s nose. She decides, right then and there, that her nose is perfect and that she loves it.

“I do have her nose,” she says, mostly to reassure baba that she agrees with him. She knows she needs to tell him because she’s a big girl now and knows baba can’t read her thoughts. He’s claimed he can in the past.

Baba puts a hand on her shoulder, nodding. “You do.” Then he grins. “And you have my hair.”

Kizito is the first to laugh, arm slung around his wife who soon joins him, despite her red-rimmed eyes. Nabulungi, too, giggles because baba doesn’t have any hair, so that’s a silly thing to say.

She tells him so.

“Nabulungi, you don’t acutlly think I have been bald my entire life, do you?” he asks, warmly, ruffling her hair with his fingers.

And Nabulungi just shakes her head, even though she did think that, but she’s far to focused on that gleam she sees in his eyes have taken to them once more. It’s strange.

She looks at the mirror and sees her mama’s nose again. She can’t help but put a finger to it, poking it.

Briefly, she wonders what baba sees in the mirror. In himself.

She doesn’t know that he only sees her, his entire world, his everything. And that he, in himself, sees someone who will do anything to protect her.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, feedback is always appreciated!
> 
> I wrote this because I found the lack of Nabulungi fics sorta annoying and because I have an obscene amount of headcanons for her. Feel free to shoot me a message on tumblr @htyhtiasmmsibijt if you wanna share some of your own!


End file.
